A guide loop for a safety belt in a motor vehicle is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,702,327 B2. It includes a guide element having a guide slit, also designated as a belt eye, for the safety belt. The guide element is in the form of a one-piece metal body of steel plate manufactured by the cold forming process, which is fixed to the vehicle body by means of a fixing screw through a fixing hole in a mounting surface. A plastic adapter is connected to the guide element, and includes a cylindrical collar for fixing of the same which can be inserted in the fixing hole and also a fixable displacement body at the upper limit of the belt eye for limiting the width of the guide slit.
A disadvantage of this solution is that the screw head of the fixing screw is only supported on the guide element with an extremely small overlap due to the cylindrical collar of the adapter located inside the fixing hole. Because of this very slight overlap, there is significant risk that the fixing screw could pop out of the fixing hole of the guide elements in the presence of large loads, such as those occurring during a crash.
One solution is enlarging the overlap by means of correspondingly-sized washers or using fixing screws with special dimensions, in particular screws with large heads. However, this leads to increased costs and parts count. Therefore, an improved solution is required.
Starting from the guide loop described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,702,327, it is the objective of the present invention to create an improved device which effectively prevents the fixing screw head from popping out of the fixing hole, while attaching an adapter to the guide element with a simple and low-cost means.